This is a question I have gotten from sponsors for as long as I have worked at Compassion, but I have heard it asked especially often over the last few months. I hope to explain a little of what might be contributing to the length of time that it is taking for you to receive a letter.
Letters are important. They have the power to communicate to a child, “You are known and loved.” Because letters are precious and cherished, we want to make sure that the processing and translation of these letters is done right.
In the past, a child might have asked their sponsor in a letter to pray for their father who was sick at the time that the letter was written. Because letters may have taken two to three months to be delivered, the father may have passed away by the time the sponsor received the letter. There’s a lot that can happen in a child’s life in two to three months.
This drives home a point for us: letters matter and the timeliness of letters matters too. Being able to tell a child, “I’m praying for you as you take your exam” is powerful and encouraging, but it is especially meaningful when said before they actually take their exam.
Here at Compassion, we are all about relationships. We are in relationship with local church partners to empower them to serve their communities. We connect supporters and children so that they can participate in mutually transformative relationships. If we could speed up the time that it takes for a letter to be exchanged back and forth between supporters and children, it would also enrich the relationships between them.
If we could be more efficient, we could send more and more letters and serve more children in the future. As the momentum was built, the lives of many more children would be impacted by the life-saving benefits of our program.
Something needed to be done to help us deliver letters more efficiently. So for several years we prayerfully worked to bring this vision to fruition. Then in April 2016, we began using a new system designed to help us deliver letters faster than ever before.
While the new system enabled us to deliver thousands of letters in two weeks or less, we also encountered issues that we had not anticipated.
Unfortunately, these issues have increased the letter delivery time for about one-third of our sponsors. We are regrettably aware that, depending on when the letter before that was sent, some supporters are waiting six months or more for a letter.
We are committed to continue delivering letters even as we work diligently to resolve the issues in the new system as efficiently as possible.
Thank you so much for all of your patience with us as we upgrade our systems. Please excuse our dust as our letter delivery system is under construction!
Here are ways you can be praying for us as we go through this transition:
- Pray for insight and efficiency as the team continues resolving all the remaining issues.
- Pray for God’s protection over our new technology and that our system will work as it is supposed to.
- Pray for patience and grace across the ministry worldwide as we work together to resolve these challenges and move forward.
- Pray for wisdom and effective teamwork.
Even though these changes are affecting the time it takes to send and receive letters for some, rest assured that the value of your and the children’s letters when they do arrive is the same! Please continue to write to share your love and encouragement with the child or teen your sponsor.
